Last night, my daughter handed me my "save the date" magnets for the folks I can invite from work. The challenge of a wedding is that you can't simply invite everyone you know.  The guest list is a very tricky part of this process. My daughter has a spreadsheet, and a cap on the number.  Watching her balance the list is like watching an NFL general manager prepare for draft day. The must-invites are pretty easy to figure out. It's when you get down to the final picks that it gets very difficult. 

But there is some wiggle room, I think.  

My textbook (Wedding Planning for Dummies) says this:  "Remember that the mysterious folks who calculate wedding statistics say that you can expect 10 to 20 percent of those invited not to attend. That's the national average, but it could be irrelevant to your situation, so don't bank on this to plan the size of your venue or to determine your budget's bottom line. You might be the lucky ones blessed with 100 percent attendance."  

Couple got married at a Wal-Mart in Ohio on Thursday. Evidently, this happens a bunch. Here's a story from 2002 about a similar wedding in Florida. And here's a story about how discounters like Target and Wal-Mart have become popular places for gowns and rings and other nuptial items, as the cost of a wedding has reached $27,852, on average, according to a study by Conde Nast Bridal Media.

Not that I'm suggesting anything.

This tip from my niece, Rebecca, who is a veterinarian in Arizona. She got married in June in upstate New York. Let me state for the record that it was a very nice wedding, and I didn't notice the glitch that she mentions herein:

"An important thing to make sure gets planned: exactly how the dinner/toasts should go, and WHO exactly will act as MC. Nate and I sat down at our head table and I kept waiting for something to happen, for someone to start toasts or start serving salad, and finally one of the caterers discreetly whispered to me that in fact, I was supposed to direct the activities from my dinner setting. oops."

If you know of any "oops" moments, post them here.

A bride-to-be just gave me a tip that I wanted to pass on.  She started out with a steno pad to keep track of all her wedding plans.  This evolved into a folder, and then a box, and then three boxes.  What she realized, now that her wedding is just around the corner, is that what she really needed from the start were boxes with hanging folders so she could keep a folder on each vendor.  A folder on each vendor? I asked.  Yep.  She's dealing with about two dozen vendors, from the DJ to the caterer to the Men's Warehouse to David's Bridal to the florist, etc. etc.

This bride also has all her guests on an Excel spreadsheeet, with a column for who has RSVP'd, whether they're showing up or not, what food preference they've expressed, etc. etc. so when it comes time to deliver the final guest list and all the required information, it's all manageable.

Isn't that every young girl's dream .... to grow up and manage her wedding with hanging files and a spreadsheet?   

The response to my first blog post included some helpful tips from guys who have been through this before, or are going through it, like me, for the first time. One fellow, who goes by the handle jaycopan, said that when one of his daughters was married five years ago, he was told about the three S's. Sit down, shell out and shut up. His youngest daughter is getting married in May. He is still following the advice.

Another fellow, hjzinn, counseled me not to worry so much about the prospect of my daughter winding up on the West Coast if her fiance gets a job in Silicon Valley. His daughter is graduating from ECU in May and is marrying a guy who is in the Navy in June, a week after my daughter's wedding. He's worrying where in the world his future son-in-law may be posted (and thus, his daughter), not where in the States. Good advice. I'll dial back the whining.

Let me introduce myself. I am less than three weeks away from my 54th birthday. I have spent my entire adult life as a journalist. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, Mass., but have lived south of the Mason-Dixon line for most of my years.

Eleven years ago, we moved to Clayton so I could work for The News & Observer. That decision led, in a meandering sort of way, to this blog, because it was in Clayton that my daughter, Hilary, met the boy who would become the man she is going to marry next June. His family had also moved to Clayton from somewhere else. In fact, if there is one defining characteristic of Clayton, it is that many of us have come from somewhere else.

When you make a career decision like I did in 1996, I didn't think that I would be setting in motion events that would bring my daughter and Travis Holtzhauser together. Just as when I decided to take a job in Southwest Virginia in 1975 at a small newspaper, I didn't think that I would be setting in motion events that would lead to meeting my wife. There is a randomness about life that is both exciting and disconcerting.

But here we are, around 250 days away from the June 7, 2008 wedding. In this blog, I will try to share with you what it's like being the father of the bride. I will try to be informative and helpful while still retaining some zone of privacy. For example, I won't go into how much this is all costing. I will probably figure a way to give you some idea of what weddings cost these days, but you'll have to indulge me.

My family has been good enough to let me do this blog. But they are not without some apprehension. In the recent past, I have written two stories about what it was like to take my daughter to concerts (Celine Dion and Britney Spears), and I more recently wrote about going to get a tattoo with my son after he turned 18. I remained on reasonably good terms with everyone after these were published, but I have to acknowledge that one of the perils of being in the same family as a journalist is that your life may become fodder for journalism.

Anyway, I am starting to feel some conflicted emotions as the wedding comes into view over the horizon. The other night, I had trouble sleeping, thinking about the possibility that my daughter may move to the other side of the country. Travis is a computer science major at N.C. State, and is starting to interview with companies because he graduates this December. (My daughter graduates this December as well, from UNC-Chapel Hill.) We have lots and lots of computer firms here in the Research Triangle, but he could end up just as easily in Silicon Valley. And so would my daughter.

I want Hilary and Travis to go where the opportunities take them, and I know with instant messaging and email and free night cell phone calls, we won't be out of touch. But I've spent 21 years getting used to having Hilary around the house. Nothing -- not unloading her stuff at UNC, or seeing her off to Mexico when she studied down there for five months -- nothing has prepared me for that. Even walking her down the aisle won't have the empty-nest impact of helping her off to California or Texas.

Post-script: I would like to say that I am considerably more attractive and distinguished-looking than the caricature drawn by Tim Lee, which appeared in Tuesday's Life, Etc. section and is on the left side of this blog. Tim is an excellent artist, and usually nails his subject, but I just don't know what he was thinking here.